Hello everyone, let me give you a short update on what happened this year and what you can expect for next year.
January - New Supply and Center of Mass
Revamping the dock and supply ship gameplay marked the beginning of the year. Supply ships gained independence from docks, a new Docking Port Interior Item was introduced, and Mass Balancers became interior items. Another addition was an interior mass balancer for early artificial gravity initiation.
February - New Shuttlebay and Overlays
I worked more on the Overlays, showing a Center of Mass overlay and more advanced overlays when hovering over a resource container, showing routes and more to make it easier to understand what's going on and why it might not work. I also converted the door to an interior item, which again brings a complete new game experience and makes rooms more updatable. The new Advanced Missions including a new Shuttlebay interior item are also finished.
March - Person Improvement
People have improved a lot in March. I improved the complete clothing and generation system and added more clothes and other looks. The Path system now uses more direct ways. Also nationalities have been added with more random names of the persons. Beside that a new History System has been added, so you can now analyze the resource creation, productivity and the Person Activities.
April - Under the hood
In this Month, there were not many new things, but under the hood happened a huge Unity Update and many bug fixes belong to that. It also got a huge fps improvement, by moving the mesh-cutter logic from the px based shader to a once calculated mesh cutting. Besides that many small ui and gameplay improvements. Big steps forward to the first beta test.
May - Air Systems
The Air Systems got a big overhole. Everything related to that has been improved, starting from gaugeelements, markers and more. Also the doors can now be just closed, so people can walk through. Rest of the Month was bug fixes and Polishings, to get the Game ready for the planned Beta phase.
June - Thermal Control
I finished the last 3D Model updates and added one of the last main features: Thermal Control. It’s a two step process, to get rid of the heat. Besides that i could finish most of the usability features, to improve the player experience.
July - Infrastructure
This month I was on vacation, so not so much happened related to the game itself. The main focus this month was on infrastructure topics. A better release process, reportings and make the server running on several servers, so it's more reliable.
August - Prepare for Playtest
I prepared for a larger beta phase and a demo phase. I also worked on some rare bugs and worked a lot on the Marketing, including a new Logo and preparations for a Trailer.
September - Fire
I created a new Trailer and also added Fire as one of the last bigger Features for the Simulation. The UI also gets a design that looks more scifi.
Oktober - Person Polish
This month was just a polishing month, adding uniforms for people, visualizing the slots and bringing the UI to the next level. At the end of the month the transportation system got a new logic.
November - Environment
In November the room types were removed, to make the game smoother to play experience. Instead of that, the planned environment feature was added, so interior items interfere with each other and make e.g. noise in the room. It also brings a new Storage system, that is easier to understand for new players.
December - Polishing
In December I was sick most of the time and could not work so much, so just some polishing was done there, no big topics.
Here a picture from one of my playtests.
Plan for next Year
Beta Test and Demo
At the start of the year i plan to make a bigger public beta test. There will be a weekly tester event in Discord to get the last bugs out of the core systems.
Roadmap
The main part of the game is done and working fine so far. If you already have access to the playtest of the game, I would be happy for your comments on the changes.
I plan to add more story related events, more achievements. Navigation systems and work more on the persons are planned too.
Wishlist
If you haven't done it yet, please wishlist and follow to keep up to date :)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1638030/Generation_Ship/